BOOKS: What Every Pet Owner Should Know

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2007:

What Every Pet Owner Should Know
by Karen Halligan, DVM
Harper Collins Publishers Inc. (10 East 53rd St.,
New York, NY 10022), 2007. 312 pages, hardcover. $24.85.

Karen Halligan, director of veterinary services for SPCA/LA,
is well-known to television viewers through her frequent appearances
on animal-related programs.
What Every Pet Owner Should Know comprehensively addresses
the whole range of potential problems faced by pet owners, including
how to reduce veterinary bills by taking preventative measures such
as cleaning a pet’s teeth; what pet to choose for one’s particular
needs and circumstances; the ins and outs of pet insurance; and
especially, how to recognise illness and address it.

Halligan de-mystifies animal diseases, explaining how they
are caused and how to combat them. There is much common sense and
personal experience in her pages– but we are not persuaded that dry
kibble is a complete and adequate canine menu. We have found that
hip displacia, for example, appears to be diet-related, based on
our experience with a Rottweiler who had such severe hip displacia
that we considered putting her down at age three. Then she began
eating the eggs that our chickens were laying around the house. Her
skeletal development completed itself, and the hip defect
disappeared. She lived to a ripe old age. Since then we have always
supplemented our dogs’ diets with raw eggs and marrowbones.